Following the standing ovations at COMDEX, Vivastar is now ready to face an even larger and demanding audience with its newest shooting star, the internal DVD writer RS-111. The drive of the Swiss specialist for optical storage technology writes DVD-R and DVD-RAM media at speeds of 1x and 2x respectively and reads DVD-R media at 4x speed. The writer will be available in stores from February 2002 and retails at EUR 599.00 (recommended retail price including VAT).

The ATAPI drive is one the first universally compatible DVD recorders in the market. DVD-ROM drives in personal computers, as well as DVD players in the home entertainment sector, can read DVD-Rs written with this drive. The RS-111 itself can not only read its own DVD-R and DVD-RAM formats, but also DVD videos, DVD-ROMs and DVD+RW and DVD-RW media. The average access time is 110 milliseconds while the size of the data buffer is 1 MB.

The video editing and video authoring software supplied with the RS-111 supports scene-recognition and allows the user to process recordings. A user can, for example, delete commercials breaks from a recorded television show.

The package comes with an extensive range of accessories, including the Vivastar DVD recording software and Power Director 2.0 (video authoring and video editing). Owners of the RS-111 can additionally use the latest version of the DVD labelling programme Click N’Design and the distinguished, award-winning software Cyberlink Power VCR, which turns the PC at home into a DVD home recorder with timeshifting functions. A 30-day trial version of the ACDSee 4.0 picture processing software is also included as an added bonus.

Vivastar warrants a two-year guarantee (12 months outside of Europe) for its writer and offers customer service on its website www.vivastar.com.

“The DVD will slowly, but surely, replace the CD over the next few years. A key prerequisite of this process is a wide range of hardware, which can read and write media in a safe and reliable manner,” says Atanas Zafirov, Chairman and CEO of Vivastar AG. “We are doing our part to support this process and are making a mark in the market with reasonably priced DVD media, made in Switzerland.”

The product range of Vivastar allows its customers to choose from a variety of modern optical storage technologies when the storage of video, music or other contents is required. The external DVD writer RS-121 and other DVD media formats are to follow the RS-111 in spring of 2002.